Use of server instances and processing elements to define a server

ABSTRACT

A server instance, which is a collection of LUNs, containing an operating system, any applications and data storage. A processing element is the physical hardware. The combination is a server as normally understood. Templates are used to define server instances and server types to simplify deploying a server instance to a processing element. A graphical user interface provides the templates where the particular storage groups are identified and then server instances are created from lists of operating systems, applications, and available storage. The management service processor is a PXE server and provides the necessary software to identify the components of the processing element and correlate between the processing element and a server instance. The management service processor then automatically provides software to the processing element to allow it correctly boot. The management service processor manages the interconnection of the processing element and the relevant LUNs.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(e)of U.S. Provisional Patent Application 60/639,854, entitled “ComputerSystem Persistent State Management and Instruction,” filed Dec. 27,2004, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

This application is related to U.S. patent applications Ser. No. ______entitled “Template-based Development of Servers” and Ser. No. ______entitled “Automated Deployment of Operating System and Data Space to aServer”, filed concurrently herewith and hereby incorporated byreference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Inventions

The invention relates to management of computer system and, moreparticular, to instantiations and state management of computer serversand systems.

2. Description of the Related Art

A computer system is commonly comprised of two primary components: (1) aprocessing element that includes temporary random memory, one or morecomputer processing units (CPU), and input/output (I/O) capabilities;and (2) persistent storage, typically implemented as a hard disk drivegenerally referred to as “disk drives” or simply as “disks.” One exampleis a server with its related storage. A computer system's storage isgenerally classified into two types: (1) program codes that contain theprogramming instructions executed by its CPU that is, the operatingsystem and applications that use that operating system; and (2)persistent storage needed by the operating system and applications, suchas e-mail storage, websites and database systems.

This simplified description illustrates that a computer system typicallyneeds all of these parts to act together at one time. The persistentcopy of the operating system and applications define what a computersystem does and how it does it. For example, on-line store. Thepersistent storage used by those applications, in turn, will determinethe identity of the store, such as whether the on-line store is a luxuryretailer or a wholesale supply house, and its inventory and pricing.

Previously, the processing elements and disk subsystems were typicallybound closely together. This was determined primarily by the need tocost effectively access disks with good performance from the processingsystem. This style of connecting storage to processor is generally knownas directly attached storage. An implication of this interconnect styleis that an entire system would run a single set of applications on aparticular operating system with a particular data set. Examples of suchsystems are the desktop computers and servers that will be familiar tothose skilled in the art.

Currently there are much more flexible techniques for connectingcomputer storage and processors. Many of the storage devices can beaccessed by many processing systems through a network. Systems thatpresent block level disk devices across the network are generally knownas storage area networks (SANs). These SAN implementations have becomeincreasingly common since the late 1990s. Prior to that, storage wouldtypically be made available over networks using relatively high levelfile or database access protocols. When the dedicated servers orappliances are used as file servers, that approach is often referred asnetwork attached storage (NAS).

The block level or SAN approach is typically the more flexible andhigher performance approach. One reason SANs are more flexible isbecause computer systems are constructed to start-up, or boot, in aseries of steps. The earlier steps in the boot sequence usually onlydeal with block level devices. In the later steps where the operatingsystem is loaded onto the processing element, the operating systemitself will generally define its own preferred structures, such as afile or database system, on a block level device.

Installing the persistent copy of the operating system on a processingelement can be a rather complicated process that is labor-intensive andtypically requires specialized computer system expertise. This iscomplicated by current computing environments. For example, serverstoday are commonly available in what are called blade or rackenvironments. In a rack environment, a series of thin servers arelocated in a rack. In a blade environment, a series of processingelements on individual blades are contained in a chassis, with a rackoften containing multiple chassis. The high density leads to greatphysical management issues, particularly if a system fails. Further, ifdirect attached storage is used on each of these systems, the availablestorage space may be limited and the management issues are greatlyincreased as disk drives are a high failure item. In addition to thephysical management issues, the logical management issues are also verycomplicated. When there may be hundreds of these servers either in bladeor rack format, keeping track of applications assigned to each serverbecomes formidable.

While SANs are very flexible in providing a great deal ofhigh-performance storage, actually managing and interconnecting theservers and storage units can be a relatively complicated operation.Zones need to be properly arranged, LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) need tobe properly organized and defined and so on. In a larger environmentthere could be hundreds of servers as noted above, and literallythousands of LUNs available from the various storage devices, all ondifferent portions of the SAN. The mapping between the various items canbe horribly complex and very difficult and time consuming. Further, itcan be highly error prone. Therefore methods and techniques to developand simplify the management and deployment of servers and relatedstorage, especially in enterprise environments, are highly desirable.

SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

Embodiments according to the present invention utilize three concepts.The first concept is that a server is defined as a server instance,which is a collection of LUNs, with one of the LUNs containing anoperating system, one LUN preferably containing any applications andvarious LUNs containing the required data storage. The next concept isthat a processing element is really just the physical hardware of therelevant server. The combination of a server instance and a processingelement is then a server as normally understood. A third concept is thattemplates are used to define the server instances and server types sothat deploying a server instance to a particular processing element issimplified.

The basic components of systems according to the present inventioninclude a management service processor which maintains a database of thevarious items which are present and oversees development and deploymentof the particular processing elements and the particular serverinstances. The management service processor interfaces with anadministrator via a graphical user interface in most instances. Thegraphical user interface provides a series of templates, such as storageand server templates, where the particular storage groups are identifiedand then server instances are created by having drop-down lists ofoperating systems, applications, and available storage as required.Preferably the management service processor operates as a PXE, orpreboot execution environment, server so that when a processing elementis activated, the management service processor responds and provides thenecessary software to the processing element to identify the componentsof the processing element and then to properly correlate between theprocessing element and a server instance as indicated by anadministrator. The management service processor then automaticallyprovides software to the processing element to allow it to correctlyboot as desired by the administrator. In a preferred embodiment, this isbooting over a SAN with the operating system, application and datavolumes all located on storage units in the SAN. In other embodimentsthe server instance can be provided over either a LAN or a SAN to directattached storage of the processing element. In the SAN boot case, thevarious caching files can be located in a direct attached mode on theparticular processing element or in a storage unit on the SAN.

The management service processor manages the interconnection of theprocessing element and the relevant LUNs by properly assigning zoninginformation to the switches in the SAN fabric to allow the particularprocessing element to securely and correctly contact its appropriatestorage units. The storage devices are preferably programmed to appearas desired for access by the processing element. In certain embodimentsthis can be done directly with the storage units and in other cases avirtualization device is utilized as an interface between the processingelements and the storage units to perform this mapping function.

With these techniques and the use of templates, it is also easy totransfer a server instance to a different physical element should theoriginal physical element fail for some reason or if a higherperformance unit is needed.

Because control of the operating system and application instances areunder control of the management service processor, operating system andapplication license management is readily performed using the managementservice processor as the central control point. This provides furthersimplification for the administrative duties of managing the entirecomputer system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a storage area network generally showing aseries of hosts, storage units and a fabric.

FIG. 2 is an illustration of a processing element and a server instanceaccording to the preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an illustration of various server instance deployment modelsaccording to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an illustration of various components in a system according tothe present invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of the software environment of a managementservice processor according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a screen shot of a graphical user interface of a managementtool utilized by an administrator according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 7 is an illustration to indicate various operations in developing aserver instance according to the present invention.

FIGS. 7A and 7B are detailed diagrams showing development of serverinstances according to the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a screen shot of a basic template creation screen according tothe present invention.

FIG. 9 is a screen shot of a storage template according to the presentinvention.

FIG. 10 is a screen shot of a server template according to the presentinvention.

FIG. 11 is a screen shot of a wizard to create a new server according tothe present invention.

FIG. 12 is a screen shot of a data entry screen for server configurationaccording to the present invention.

FIG. 13 is a screen shot illustrating various operations in the creationof a server instance according to the present invention.

FIG. 14 is an illustration of various operations to deploy a serverinstance to a processing element according to the present invention.

FIGS. 14A, 14B-1 and 14B-2 are detailed diagrams of the steps indeploying a server instance to a processing element according to thepresent invention.

FIG. 15 is a screen shot of a wizard for deploying a server instance toa new processing element according to the present invention.

FIG. 16 is a screen shot indicating a new processing element has beenfound according to the present invention.

FIG. 17 is a screen shot indicating various operations in deploying aserver instance to a physical processing element.

FIG. 18 is an illustration indicating the operations for transferring aserver instance from one processing element to another according to thepresent invention.

FIG. 19 is a screen shot of a first of the operations of FIG. 18.

FIG. 20 is a screen shot of the second of the operations of FIG. 18.

FIG. 21 is a screen shot of the third of the operations according toFIG. 18.

FIG. 22 is a screen shot of the fourth of the operations of FIG. 18.

FIG. 23 is a screen shot indicating capturing of an operating systemimage according to the present invention.

FIG. 24 is a screen shot of license key management according to thepresent invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Referring now to FIG. 1, a brief overview of a storage area network orSAN is shown. A series of hosts 100 are connected through a SAN fabric102 to a series of storage units 104. Preferably the SAN fabric 102 iscomprised of a series of switches. The fabric can either be FibreChannel or iSCSI or a mixture as required, with proper routing devicesincorporated.

Referring now to FIG. 2, two basic concepts according to the presentinvention are illustrated. The first concept is a server instance 200. Aserver instance 200 is thought of as the actual personality of a server.It includes an operating system LUN 202, an application LUN 204 andvarious data LUNs 206 and 208 as necessary. Example operating systemsinclude Windows and Linux; various applications include Exchange, Oracleand so on. The second concept is a processing element 210. Theprocessing element 210 includes server hardware 212, with the serverhardware 212 including an Ethernet or network interface card 214 and aFibre Channel or iSCSI HBA (host bus adapter) 216. Together thecombination of a server instance 210 and the processing element 212 forma deployed server 220.

Referring now to FIG. 3, four different models of server deployment areillustrated. In model 1 the server hardware 212-1 includes directattached storage. In this embodiment the server instance 200-1 islocated on the LUNs contained on the direct attached storage. In model 2the server hardware 212-2 contains direct attached storage; however, thedata is maintained in various LUNs on the SAN. Thus in this case theserver instance 200-2 consists of a series of LUNs contained on theserver hardware 212-2 and a series of LUNs contained on the SAN. Model 3does include direct attached storage on the server hardware 212-3 but inthis case it is used only as local swap space for the operating system.The actual boot copy of the operating system and the data, i.e., theserver instance 200-3, are located out on the SAN, with only local swapspace on the direct attached storage of the server hardware 212-3. Thefinal model is model 4, which has no direct attached storage. In thiscase the server instance 200-4 is located entirely on the SAN with theoperating system, application and data storage on various LUNs. Theserver hardware 212-4 thus has all storage on the SAN.

Each of the models has certain different aspects but are similar in thatall can be managed in a generally similar fashion. In models 1 and 2 theoperating system instance is copied from the appropriate LUN, eitherover an Ethernet network or from the SAN, to the direct attached storagelocated on the server hardware 212. In models 3 and 4 the processingelement 210 boots from a server instance 200 located on the SAN. Thoughmodels 3 and 4 could be done over a LAN, preferably this would not bedone because of performance considerations.

FIG. 4 illustrates the various components available in a systemaccording to the present invention. There are a series of processingelements 210 connected to the SAN fabric 102, with a series of storageunits 104 also connected to the SAN fabric 102. There is also avirtualization component or device 402 connected to the SAN fabric 102.The virtualization component 402 preferably is a virtualization deviceto be utilized in the case where the storage units 104 cannot properlymap themselves to appear correctly to the processing elements 210. Inthat embodiment the virtualization component 402 presents theappropriate interface or LUN0 to the processing element 210 and thentranslates the request received from the processing element 210 to beproperly routed and provided to the appropriate LUNs in the variousstorage units 104. A management service processor 404 includes ahardware component 406 and a software component 408. Preferably thehardware component 406 is a generic server platform but other platformscould be used as desired. The software component 408 provides variousmanagement functions to be described hereinafter. The management serviceprocessor 404 is connected to both the SAN fabric 102 and to a localarea network or LAN 410. Each of the processing elements 210 isconnected to the LAN 410 for PXE (pre-boot execution) capabilities. Themanagement service processor 404 is connected to the LAN 410 to receivethese PXE requests and to otherwise communicate directly with theprocessing elements 210. Shown for completeness is a domain controller412 located on the LAN 410 which handles normal LAN functions such asDHCP (meaning either the protocol for Internet Protocol (IP) addressassignment or such a service) serving, DNS and so on.

FIG. 5 illustrates the software architecture of the management serviceprocessor 404 according to the preferred embodiment. Not illustrated inFIG. 5 is the underlying operating system of the management serviceprocessor 404. This has been removed for clarity. A first portion of thesoftware 408 is the server instance management section 502. Thisincludes a server instance manager 504 which provides the overallmanagement function for the server instances. Various subcomponentsinclude an OS image capture module 506, a golden image manager 508, adata LUN allocation module 510 and a license manager module 512. Linuxand Microsoft Windows server operating system image capture modules 514and 516 cooperate with the image capture module 506 to provide theappropriate golden images. Operation of the image capture and variousserver instance management capabilities are illustrated and describedbelow.

A second major portion of the software component 408 is the diskallocation services 520. The highest level module is the disk allocationservice 522 which includes a storage pool of available LUNs 524. Afabric manager 526 is provided along with a virtual disk abstractionlayer 527 to handle virtualization requirements. A hardwarevirtualization component manager module 528 is provided to operate withthe hardware virtualization device 402 for virtualization capabilities.VDS (Virtual Disk Service from Microsoft) and SMI-S (Storage ManagementInitiative—Standard from the Storage Networking Industry Association)enclosure modules 530 and 532 are provided to cooperate with the variousstorage units 104 and their management techniques to properly configureaware storage units 104 with the proper LUNs and so on as required bythe processing elements 210 for booting.

A third portion of the software component 408 is the operating serviceselements 540. The highest level is a processing element services layer542 which includes submodules for performing various operations on theprocessing elements 210. These submodules include power on 544, tohandle turning on processing elements; shutdown 546, to turn offprocessing elements; HBA configuration 548, to handle configuring HBAsto properly locate LUN0 for booting; asset 550, to determine the assetsor devices in a processing element; and health 552, to respond to eventsaffecting the processing element operation. A policy management module560 and job orchestration module 562 are present to providecross-checking and operations management. A virtualization componentconfiguration module 564, a preboot execution module 566 to handle PXErequests from the processing element; an IPMI (Intelligent PlatformManagement Interface) module 568 to properly monitor and manage theprocessing elements, an EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) module 570to allow better interactions with the processing element hardware, anNBP (Network Bootstrap Program) module 572 to provide boot programs tothe processing elements, a WFM (Wired for Management) module 574 to alsoprovide for monitoring and management of processing elements; and anasset collection module 576 to aid in developing a database of thecomponents of the processing elements are also present in this portionof the software 408. The operation of various modules will be describedin more detail below as needed.

The next portion of the software 408 is the interface portion and thisincludes an API 580 which interfaces with a command level interface 582and a graphical user interface 584. Preferably the graphic userinterface 584 is based on a web server so that an administrator needonly point a browser to the management service processor 404.

Finally, a meta-data repository or database 590 is contained in thesoftware 408 to store the various allocations and data about theprocessing elements, sever instances, operating system images and soone.

Proceeding now to FIG. 6, the opening screen of the management oradministrative graphical user interface is shown. A left hand columnincludes a main menu portion 600. Included in the main menu portion 600are managed devices 602, templates 604, servers 606, operating systems608, and other relevant primary tabs. Various steps performed under eachof these tabs 602-608 will be explained below.

Referring now to FIG. 7, basic operations of developing a serverinstance are described based on the various components according to thepresent invention. The management graphical user interface 700, whichappears on the administrator's desktop computer, is connected to themanagement service processor 404 by a LAN link from the desktopcomputer. In this preferred embodiment the management service processor404 is connected to the virtualization component 402. To begin operationan administrator uses the management GUI 700 to contact the managementservice processor 404 to create a server instance in step 1. Themanagement service processor 404 in step 2 then allocates the properboot image as described below. In the third step, the management serviceprocessor 404 allocates the data disks. Thus, this creates the completedserver instance as step 4.

FIGS. 7A and 7B provide more detail on the creation of Windows and Linuxserver instances. Referring to FIG. 7A, in step 702 the user oradministrator issues a request to develop a server instance. The variousinputs to be described below are collected in step 704. In step 706 theGUI provides the request and data to the job orchestration module 562.In step 708 the job orchestration module 562 communicates with theserver instance manager 504 to create the server instance. The serverinstance manager 504 requests an OS image from the golden images manager508 in step 710. In step 712 the image manager 508 communicates with thedisk allocation services 522 to obtain the location of the desiredgolden image and to obtain a LUN on which to place a copy of the goldenimage for use by a processing element. This information is provided to aWindows Imaging Service to customize the golden image of this serverinstance. Preferably the Windows golden images are depersonalized andprepared for booting using a tool such as sysprep for Windowsenvironments. The image is repersonalized when it is booted the firsttime. Any application instances would be created in a fashion similar tothe operating systems, namely by finding a master version and copying itto an assigned LUN. This application instance development has not beenshown for simplicity. In step 716 the server instance manager 504requests various data LUNs from the disk allocation service 522. Thedisk allocation service 522 includes a database of the LUNs under thecontrol of the management service processor 404. This database is thestorage pool 524. The list of LUNs is developed by the administratormanually indicating LUNs or automatically when the administratorindicates a storage unit 104 is under control of the management serviceprocessor 404 and then all of the LUNs exposed by that storage unit 104are incorporated into the pool. This database is the storage pool 524.The disk allocation service keeps track of allocated and available LUNs.The disk allocation service keeps track of allocated and available LUNs.The necessary LUNs are allocated based on specified parameters such asneeded space, redundancy type and cost. As LUNs are assigned for the OSimage copy and the data, they are removed form the available pool. Asthe various LUN information for the OS and data disks are received, thejob orchestration module 562 provides this information in step 718 tothe meta-data repository 590 as the requested server instance.

Linux server instance creation is slightly simpler becausepersonalization of the OS in the preferred embodiment is performed basedon a customized script generated based on the operating systemconfiguration file, so the customization step is not done at this time.Otherwise similar steps are performed as shown in FIG. 7B.

With this description of the particular steps, we proceed to FIG. 8which is a screen shot of the home template page. As can be seen, thereare server templates 800 and storage templates 802. FIG. 9 illustratesthe entries available for a storage template 800. The first requirementis to define a template name 900 for later reference and use. Then forthe particular template there are a series of options. The first optionis the size of the storage required in column 902. This can be anydesired size in megabytes, gigabytes or so on. Column 904 provides thesecond option, which is the layout or redundancy options. The layoutoptions include JBOD Oust a bunch of disks) or SIMPLE, RAID 0, RAID 1,RAID 5 and other options as desired for data integrity, as well as ANY,which requires only the desired size be available. The third columnprovides a cost aspect 906 for the particular storage template. Theoptions are low, medium and high and these can be assigned to particularstorage units 104 based on their actual cost of operation and overheadcharges.

Proceeding then to FIG. 10, a server template 802 is shown. The firstentry 1000 is an entry for the template name to allow later reuse ofthis particular template. The next entry 1002 is how the operatingsystem is installed. The options identify whether a scripted install oran image-based install is to be used. The next available option 1004 forthe administrator is the OS installation name, which indicates theoperating system and version to be used. Entry 1006 is an OSconfiguration file such as sysprep.inf, answer.txt or Linux Kickstart,which indicates the configuration or script file to be used to installand/or prepare the golden image. The next entry is the storage template1008, such as the one which was just defined in FIG. 9, so that therelevant storage elements can be applied to the particular servertemplate. At the bottom of the illustrated screen 802 are storageallocation entries 1010 and 1012 for the operating system. The entry1010 is for the layout such as RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and the secondentry 1012 is for the cost of the storage of the operating system. Withthese parameters entered, the administrator can hit the apply button anda server template is created.

By developing storage and server templates, the development anddeployment of actual physical assets is significantly reduced because inenterprise environments most servers will fall into one of the commoncategories, be it a Windows server used for Oracle operations, a Linuxmail server and so on. With the templates previously developed as justindicated above, a server instance is created by starting the new serverwizard screen as shown in FIG. 11. The entry 1100 on this screen is toselect a particular server template as just developed. After theparticular server template has been selected, the next screen thatappears is in FIG. 12, which is a Windows example. Based on theparticular server template, a license entity will be shown. The nextavailable entry is the available license keys in block 1200. Because themanagement service processor 404 is in control of deploying theparticular operating system images, it is the appropriate entity toactually manage the number of licenses actually utilized and thereforeproviding the license keys to the management service processor 404simplifies the task of managing licenses and deploying operating systemsand applications. The dropdown box 1200 lists available license keys andone is selected. In block 1202 the particular name for this server isplaced. In block 1204 the domain, in the case of a Windows system, isentered along with the domain administrator information in block 1206.Blocks 1208 and 1210 are the password for the administrator to allowautomated operations. The indicated fields are exemplary for a defaultWindows instance and are varied as appropriate based on operating systemand environment requirements.

While separate storage and server templates are preferred, they can bemerged if desired. Alternatively, they could be expanded to specify andmanage additional attributes, such as prepopulation of data luns withinitial data or applications.

The management service processor 404 then proceeds to automaticallydevelop the server instance as described above. The list of operationsdescribed above can be seen in FIG. 13. The process begins by obtainingthe information from the previous screens. With that, the managementservice processor 404 is able to select the particular LUNs to be usedfor both the operating system, the application if appropriate, and thedata LUNs. From the storage pool 504 and from the known OS images asdescribed later, the management service processor 404 allocates theLUNs. For the next step, the OS image and boot LUN information areretrieved and a boot disk is prepared. This then effectively completesthe development of the server instance 200.

Now that the server instance 200 has been created, it is appropriate todeploy it to a processing element 210. For the preferred embodiment thisis an automated process not requiring particular agents or anyadministrator support other than identifying the particular serverinstance 200 to attach to the processing element 210. The process beginsat step 1 of FIG. 14 where the processing element 210 is powered on. Asthe processing entity is preferably configured to do network or PXEboot, a PXE request is then provided by the processing element 210 asstep 2. This request is received by the management service processor404. In step 3 the management service processor 404 then obtainshardware configuration and settings from a hardware configurationdatabase in the meta-data repository 590 if the processing element 210has been previously deployed or otherwise had its configuration loadedinto the system. If the processing element 210 is not found in themeta-data repository 590, the management service processor 404 in step 4then provides a mini-DOS operating system image over the LAN to theprocessing element 210. This is a simplified mini-DOS operating systemand its function is to determine the particular hardware elementspresent in the particular processing element 210. Once this mini-DOSoperating system is provided to the processing element 210, it runs theprogram to determine its hardware assets and returns those as step 5.Then in step 6 the management service processor 404 stores the hardwareassets present in the particular processing element 210 in an assetdatabase on the meta-data repository 590 to allow management andtracking of particular units.

With the hardware assets stored, using WFM commands the managementservice processor 404 in step 7 provides a reboot command to theprocessing element 210, although a power off command can be provided ifdesired. The management service processor 404 in step 8 then providesthe server instance information as required to the virtualizationcomponent 402 or to the various storage units 104 so that the particularLUNs necessary to allow booting and access of the data and applicationsare active and present in the SAN fabric. This step 7 includes properlysetting up zoning and other items as required for proper fabricoperations. As the management service processor 404 knows the SANaddress of the processing element 210 from the asset determination andknows the various LUN SAN addresses, it can readily communicate with thezoning mechanism in the SAN fabric to place the processing element andthe LUNs in the same zone. The management service processor 404cooperates with the virtualization component 402 as needed to have thevirtualization present the proper LUN0 and to indicate the mapping fromthe LUN0 to the actual LUN in the relevant storage unit. In thevirtualization case, the zoning is then between the processing element210 and the LUNs appearing on the virtualization component 402 and therelevant storage unit.

After the server instance has been attached to the processing element210 as step 8, then in step 9 the management service processor 404provides a power on request if necessary, preferably by doing a wake onLAN (WOL) operation, to the processing element 210. With the processingelement 210 then powering up, it again provides a PXE request as step10. In response, the management service processor 404 in step 11provides another mini-OS to properly program the HBA to boot from LUN0.LUN0 is used in this description as the default boot LUN but other LUNscan be used if the storage units support the operation. To configure theprocessing element 210, the mini-OS program performs device IOCTL (IOcontrol) operations to the HBA under the direction of the managementservice processor 404. Each HBA contains an API or UI to allowprogramming of internal parameters on the HBA. Using these IOCTLoperations the desired HBA port is indicated and the SAN address of thedevice containing LUN0 is provided. The HBA stores this information ininternal non-volatile RAM. After configuring the HBA, the mini-OSreboots the processing element 210, which provides another PXE requestas step 12. In this case the management service processor 404 providesin step 13 a by-pass loader to the processing element 210. The by-passloader causes the BIOS in the processing element 210 to immediately passcontrol to the next boot device, the hard disk, which then results inthe processing element 210 attempting to boot from LUN0. The bypassloader immediately passing control is not required but is preferred tospeed up operations because often the timeouts present on the systemBIOS to try the hard disk can be long, just delaying the operations inthis case. Thus when the bypass loader has been provided, the BIOS inthe processing element 210 effecetively automatically boots to LUN0 inthe preferred embodiments, which is the HBA, which has been previouslyprogrammed with the proper addressing by world wide name (WWN) and LUNof the boot image. The HBA will then request information from the bootimage, load the boot image and then proceed to install the operatingsystem and execute. With this operation the server instance is deployedas step 12.

FIGS. 14A, 14B-1 and 14B-2 provide additional details for Windows andLinux server instance deployment. Some of the operations may beperformed in a different order from that illustrated in FIG. 14 (and thesame is true for FIGS. 7A and 7B with respect to FIG. 7), but they arenot conflicting because the timing of various of the steps can bechanged, as apparent to one skilled in the art. Addressing first FIG.14A, in step 1400 the administrator provides a deploy request to the GUI700. The GUI 700 provides the request to the job orchestration module562 in step 1402. In step 1404 the server instance 200 is attached tothe processing element 210. As described above this is done by properlysetting zoning to allowing access. This is done as two operations 1406and 1408 where the OS LUN and the data LUNs are attached. Anyapplication LUN is attached in a similar manner. For clarity the step ofconfiguring the HBA to LUN0 is not shown. In step 1410 the boot policyis indicated as bypassing to the hard disk in the policy manager 560. Instep 1412 the processing element is turned on and then in step 1414 theprocessing element 210 performs the PXE operation to the PXE module 566.The PXE module 566 determines from the policy manager 560 that thepolicy is to bypass the hard disk, so the bypass loader is provided.This causes the processing element 210 to bypass the hard drive in step1416 and boot the Windows setup from LUN0 in step 1418. Windows installsand the processing element is running in step 1420.

Linux deployment is similar, except that first the processing element210 must generate its own installation of Linux. This is done in thepreferred embodiment by using a Linux unattended install utility andthen mapping in the installed OS. Thus in step 1430 the installationprogram server instance is attached to the processing element 210. Insteps 1432 and 1434 the OS and data LUNs are attached. In step 1438 afile to control the installation and provide the customization iscreated by the job orchestration module 562. The boot policy is set tobypass in step 1440 and the processing element 210 is turned on is step1442. The processing element 210 PXE request results in the installationof the OS in step 1444. In step 1446 the processing element 210 informsthe job orchestration module 562 that installation is completed. Insteps 1448, 1450, 1452 and 1454 the various LUNs are unmapped ordetached. The bypass policy is again set to bypass in step 1410. Theserver instance is now attached as before in steps 1404, 1406 and 1408and the processing element restarted in step 1412. As before, the PXErequest of step 1414 results in the processing element 210 booting toLUN0 so that in step 1456 the Linux OS is booted. To provide furtherunderstanding of some of the operations, selected screen shots are shownand described below.

FIG. 15 is a screen shot that appears when a new processing element 210has been determined to be on the network. While the deployment stepsdescribed above presumed the processing element 210 was known, in thisinstance the processing element 210 was not previously known. Thisdetermination can be done because the management service processor 404is the PXE server on the subnet and therefore will be able to check themeta-data repository 590 for any previous asset information, such as theMAC address. Alternatively, the presence of the new processing element210 may be detected from RSCN messages provided over the SAN fabric whenthe processing element 210 is powered on. If it is an unknown processingelement 210, then a new unit has been added and the screen in FIG. 15appears. FIG. 16 illustrates the next operation, which is the selectionof the particular server instance 200 to be attached to this processingelement 210. One is selected from the list of FIG. 16 and then FIG. 17shows the various steps which then occur. Effectively these are steps 2to 7 as shown in FIG. 14. The processing element 210 is properly set forbooting and then is awakened as FIG. 14 step 9.

With the segregation into server instances and processing elements, itis very simple to move a server instance from one processing element toanother processing element. This occurs as shown in FIG. 18. In step 1the processing element is remotely shutdown. In step 2 the serverinstance A is detached for the processing element 1 simply by makingappropriate table entries and undoing the various zoning and mappingsteps. The server instance A is then attached to processing element 3 inthe indicated example by making database entries and mapping changes andproviding zoning information. Then in step 3 processing element 3 ispowered on. In step 4, when it powers up, processing element 3 will tryto boot from LUN0 which will then be server instance A. This presumesthat processing element 3 has had its HBA properly configured to bootfrom LUN0 and the mapping is done as necessary to identify the OS imagein server instance A as LUN0. Thus it is very simple and straightforwardto transfer a server instance, i.e., an operating environment, from oneprocessing element to another. This allows simple fail-over andreplacement of processing capability in an enterprise environment. Theprocess may even be automated. By monitoring RSCN messages themanagement service processor 404 can determine that a processing elementhas lost its SAN connection. If the server instance is only from theSAN, then it has clearly failed. The management service processor 404can then select an equivalent processing element from an available pooland automatically transfer the server instance. The screen shots of thesteps are shown in FIG. 19 where the processing element is shut down,FIG. 20 where the server instance is detached, FIG. 21 where it isdeployed or attached to the new processing element and then FIG. 22where the particular processing element is selected.

One of the useful features according to the present inventions is goldenimage operating system capture. Preferably various embodiments automatethis process. A master golden image for each particular server type suchas an Exchange server, an Oracle server, a Linux file server, and so on,are developed using conventional techniques. Then relevant software suchas sysprep from Microsoft or System Configurator for Linux available athttp://systemconfig.sourceforge.net is executed to allow the particularimage to be depersonalized. This golden image is captured and thenappropriately stored in a designated LUN which can be later accessed andcopied as desired. FIG. 23 illustrates the screenshot used to start thisprocess.

As noted above, because the management service processor 404 is theelement which handles deployment of the operating systems and in manycases also the applications, it is appropriate for it to perform licensemanagement. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 24, license keys can be enteredto provide license entities which can then be utilized as shown abovewhen server instances are created and ultimately deployed. Themanagement service processor 404 then tracks the keys in the meta-datarepository 590 using the license manager 512.

The above operations were described for server instance deploymentmodels 3 and 4 where booting is done from a SAN LUN and the data resideson the SAN. The operations are slightly different for models 1 and 2.For model 2, instead of having the mini-OS environment set the HBA forbooting from LUN0, the environment can contain sufficient drivers toobtain the operating system golden image from the proper SAN LUN andcopy it to the directly attached storage. Then, instead of doing bootingfrom the SAN, the processing element boots from its directly attachedstorage, with the data disks still being attached and mapped as in theabove descriptions.

Model 1 operation is slightly different. Instead of providing the OSimage over the SAN as in model 2, it is provided over the LAN from aknown file location. As no data LUNs on the SAN are used in model 1, theattachment and mapping operations described above are also notnecessary. Thus, after the OS image is copied to the processing elementin a model 1 situation, the processing element can simply be turned offand then restarted, booting to its directly attached storage.

As described above, each server instance includes its own OS image. Inlarge installations this can result in a large amount of storage beingallocated to essentially identical images. To address this problem,certain embodiments may employ the virtualization component 402 andprovide a policy that the OS image is in a copy-on-write (COW) LUN. Inthose cases, should the processing element attempt to write to the OSimage, the virtualization component 402 will trap those writes andredirect them transparently to a new LUN assigned to that processingelement. When the processing element later tries to read thatinformation, the virtualization component 402 will determine that thisdata has been written to the new LUN and will provide the requested datafrom the new LUN, rather than from the OS image LUN. In this manner manydifferent processing elements will be able to share the same OS imageand yet still be able to perform any necessary personalizationoperations without overwriting the shared OS image. This capability willgreatly reduce the needed OS image storage requirements.

Snapshoting is a well known process to capture data at selectedintervals. However, in the past snapshoting has only been performed ondata. The operating system image was not contained in any snapshot.Thus, to perform a restoration of the system to the time of the snapshotrequired building the operating system in conventional fashion and thendoing the restore. With the concept of server instances where theoperating system as well as the data is maintained as LUNs on the SAN,the snapshot operation can be configured to capture the OS image as wellas the data. Then a restoration is very simply performed by defining thesnapshot as the relevant LUNs for the server instance so that a restoreoperation is extremely efficient and quick.

The above description has attempted to be generic as to the SAN fabric.As noted, the SAN can be Fibre Channel or iSCSI or a combination. Theabove description has been based on a Fibre Channel SAN, so certainoperations may need to be altered for iSCSI operation, but those changesare apparent to one skilled in the art.

LUN is used to refer to information needed to properly address thedesignated storage area. Therefore in this description a LUN may includea WWN and a SCSI LUN in Fibre Channel cases, an IP address and a SCSILUN in iSCSI cases, SCSI LUNs for directly attached storage and othervariations as necessary to fully address a storage area.

Assignment of data LUNs has been described as being done from anavailable pool. For certain environments, particularly clusters, thedata LUNs should be shared among the various deployed servers in thecluster. The disk allocation service can be adapted to provide for thisdata LUN sharing by providing additional options during templateoperations.

While illustrative embodiments of the invention have been illustratedand described, it will be appreciated that various changes can be madetherein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

1. A method of defining a server comprising: indicating an operatingsystem image to be associated with the server; indicating a data disk tobe associated with the server; combining the indicated operating systemimage and the indicated data disk to form a server instance; and storingthe server instance for later combination to form a server.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising: indicating an application programimage to be associated with the server, wherein the indicatedapplication program image is included in the server instance.
 3. Themethod of claim 2, further comprising: associating a stored server imagewith a physical processing element to define a server.
 4. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: associating a stored server image with aphysical processing element to define a server.
 5. The method of claim1, wherein indicating an operating system image and indicating a datadisk each include indicating a logical unit number on a storage unitstoring the item.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein there is a pool ofavailable logical unit numbers and indicating a data disk includesremoving the indicated logical unit number from the pool.
 7. The methodof claim 6, wherein indicating an operating system image includesremoving the indicated logical unit number from the pool.
 8. The methodof claim 5, wherein there is a pool of available logical unit numbersand indicating an operating system image includes removing the indicatedlogical unit number from the pool.
 9. The method of claim 1, whereinindicating an operating system image includes: determining a goldenmaster image; copying the golden master image to a determined location;and indicating the copied golden master image as the operating systemimage.
 10. A machine readable medium having embodied there uponinstructions executable by a machine to perform the following methodsteps: indicating an operating system image to be associated with theserver; indicating a data disk to be associated with the server;combining the indicated operating system image and the indicated datadisk to form a server instance; and storing the server instance forlater combination to form a server.
 11. The medium of claim 10, furthercomprising: indicating an application program image to be associatedwith the server, wherein the indicated application program image isincluded in the server instance.
 12. The medium of claim 11, furthercomprising: associating a stored server image with a physical processingelement to define a server.
 13. The medium of claim 10, furthercomprising: associating a stored server image with a physical processingelement to define a server.
 14. The medium of claim 10, whereinindicating an operating system image and indicating a data disk eachinclude indicating a logical unit number on a storage unit storing theitem.
 15. The medium of claim 14, wherein there is a pool of availablelogical unit numbers and indicating a data disk includes removing theindicated logical unit number from the pool.
 16. The medium of claim 15,wherein indicating an operating system image includes removing theindicated logical unit number from the pool.
 17. The medium of claim 14,wherein there is a pool of available logical unit numbers and indicatingan operating system image includes removing the indicated logical unitnumber from the pool.
 18. The medium of claim 10, wherein indicating anoperating system image includes: determining a golden master image;copying the golden master image to a determined location; and indicatingthe copied golden master image as the operating system image.